46 Tons Of Mardi Gras Beads Get Removed From NOLA Storm Drains

Socrates Johnson8 years ago

Since probably the beginning of its existence, the city of New Orleans has had a strict beads-based rewards system as an incentive to commit depraved acts. You flash your tits, you get some beads. You helicopter your dick around, you get some beads. You punch a police horse, you get some beads. Just kidding about that last one. That’s strictly a Philly thing.

But if the powers that be in NOLA knew that their most valued form of currency would end up being about as worthless as the Iranian rial, they probably would’ve cut their losses long ago and started Beadcoin or some other such cryptotrinket system. Because if 93,000 pounds worth of beads was recently just found among the sewer people and not around the necks of New Orleans revelers, then something’s clearly not all good in the hood.

You read that right. Since September, cleaning crews from the Big Sleasy have removed 93,000 pounds, or 46 tons, worth of beads from the city’s storm drains in only a five-block radius.

From NOLA.com:

“Once you hear a number like that, there’s no going back,” Dani Galloway, interim director of the city’s Department of Public Works, said Thursday afternoon (Jan. 25) at a news conference. “So we’ve got to do better.”

Since late September, crews working under a $7 million emergency contract have flushed out 15,000 clogged catch basins – nearly one-fourth of the city’s full roster of about 68,000. Using almost two dozen vacuum trucks, crews working for Baton Rouge-based Compliance EnviroSystems managed to collect around 7.2 million pounds of debris from Sept. 26 to Jan. 23.

“This is a staggering number,” Galloway said.

The metaphor of “what happens Vegas stays in Vegas” apparently has a much more tangible manifestation when applied to NOLA. I mean, 93,000 pounds worth of bad decisions were just removed from the city’s drains.

That’s a whole lot of people who don’t want any memory of their weekend spent chugging Huge Ass Beers and respecting women at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club to follow them back to their boring, stable lives. Honestly, I’m not inclined to blame them. After all, the Mardi Gras bead is essentially a talisman that acts as a conduit between this world and the world of complete degeneracy. And everyone knows you don’t fuck with voodoo. .

[via NOLA.com]

Image via Wikimedia Commons